Peace and Social Concerns Committee Annual Report - 2007

(also available as a Word file)

We started the year by appointing a new clerk, which is why I have the privilege of presenting this report. Fortunately, Roger Conant, with some help from Peggy Anderson and Susan Conger, took thorough minutes for all of our meetings. Reviewing these minutes for the past year was rather satisfying and enlightening. Though we are a small group, we seem to have done quite a bit. Though there were a few tasks which were begun, but not completely followed through on, these were relatively few.

We lead two 11:40 hour discussions. The first one, on abortion, brought out much broader and deeper views of this complex issue than one might expect from stereotypical attenders of a “Liberal Quaker Meeting”. The second, on immigration, was a direct follow-up to messages spoken in Meeting for Worship. Hopefully, we, both collectively and as individuals will be moved to continue working on this issue.

We took over presenting the “Friendly Friday” series of evening presentations which had previously been overseen by the Affinity Group. We organized four such “Friendly Fridays”:

· A presentation by the Conants on their trip to Bolivia and the Quaker Bolivia Link

· Bolivian Quakers and the Bolivian Quaker Education Fund, a presentation by Newton Garver

· Reverberations from the Civil Rights Movement, a presentation by Adele Smith-Penniman

· Detainees in the War on Terror, film and discussion, with Bill Newman.

We began a series of letter writing campaigns to make it easy for Friends to write letters to their representatives in Congress concerning matters of interest to Friends. These have been somewhat successful and we hope to continue.

We have set up a small, but growing, library of videos and other materials related to peace and social concerns that others in the meeting may find of interest. We invite everyone to check out from, or contribute to, this library.

We have:

· Helped with the G. I. Hotline project.

· Co-sponsored the “Wide Angle Film Series”

· Signed on to the “Declaration of Peace” as a committee.

· Co-sponsored a demonstration against the illegal detentions in the Guantanamo prison camp.

· Co-sponsored an educational forum about Torture and Detention without Trial at Smith College

· Etc.

Despite our work, we do not seem to have solved all of the world’s problems. Yet, at least one of us is regularly inspired by the members of this committee to recall why he ended up at a Friends Meeting in the first place: It is a community where one seems most likely to find people faithfully striving to make the world a better place, despite a sometimes apparent lack of success.